MARCH 15, 1914 



209 



Conversations Avith Doolittle 



At Borodino, New York 



THE HARD OR SUGAR MAPLE. 



" Will you tell which is the first thing in 

 the spring to give the bees a good send-off 

 on their way to a successful gathering of 

 suri^lus from the white clover? We have 

 plenty of the hard or sugar maple about 

 here. Is there any thing better than this? " 



Any beekeper who has a spark of love 

 for his pets is all awake for the season Avhen 

 the first song of the bluebird breaks forth 

 on the air, and the musical croak or peeping 

 of the frog in the pond is heard once more. 

 And especially is that apiarist interested 

 when the workers of the hive begin to bring 

 in the first water, and when scanty loads of 

 pollen can be seen in the pollen-baskets 

 after a search far and near for this great 

 incentive to brood-rearing. He knows then 

 that active brood-rearing in such a colony 

 has commenced. With us such activity 

 commences with the pollen furnished by 

 the skunk cabbage, this being found from 

 three to ten days earlier than from any 

 other source. Then comes pollen from the 

 various pussy willows, and a day or two 

 later that from the soft maple and ihe 

 swamp elm. These last furnish a limited 

 supply of nectar, or enough at least to en- 

 able the bees to pack the pollen in the 

 pollen-baskets without cari-ying honey from 

 the hive, as is done with most of the very 

 early pollen-bearing flowers. I know of 

 nothing more cheering to the heart of the 

 wideawake apiarist than the bees scrambling 

 into the hive with their loads of pinkish- 

 hued and yellowisli-green pollen from these 

 two sources, for they forecast a successful 

 harvest from the white clover and basswood. 

 These flowers lay the foundation for the 

 great army of workers needed for the gath- 

 ering of the harvest in June and July. 



Yet, notwithstanding this, the harvest 

 would be meager were not these sources 

 followed a week or two later by something 

 which enables the bees to complete the 

 stnicture that is necessary over this foun- 

 dation. And this something is the bloom of 

 the hard or sugar maple. Occasionally there 

 is a year when a heavy freeze, or cold rainy 

 weather cuts off Uie maple bloom, in which"' 

 case the army of bees which are generally 

 reared in time for the haiwest do not ma- 

 terialize unless the apiarist is awake to his 

 job and provides plenty of honey for each 

 colony so that there is no disposition to 

 retrench in brood-rearing during the time 

 of scarcity which, under such circumstances, 

 occurs between the soft maple and elm and 

 the fi'uit bloom, the latter a week to ten 



days after the hard maple. Especially 

 necessary is this maple bloom when the 

 fruit bloom is cut off by bad weather, which 

 is far more liable to be the case than with 

 the maple, as there is only an occasional 

 year when the maples fail, while a good 

 yield from fruit bloom is the exception 

 rather than the rule. Then the hard maple 

 possesses a quality inherited by no other 

 tree with which I am acquainted. It not 

 only yields pollen the most bountifully of 

 all trees, but gives a fairly good yield of 

 nectar at the same time; and, coming as it 

 does in ample time to incite the bees and 

 queen to the greatest activity in brood-rear- 

 ing, where this tree abounds the apiarist is 

 assured of a good yield from clover and 

 basswood unless the weather is unpropi- 

 tious, or unless the bloom should fail from 

 these two last greatest in value of all the 

 nectar-producers here in the w^hite-clover 

 and basswood belts in the northern United 

 States and southern Canada. 



One reason why hard-maple bloom rarely 

 fails of giving the bees a good chance to 

 work on the bloom is that the bloom is held 

 in the bud for a long time in unpropitious 

 weather: and just as soon as the sun comes 

 out bright and clear, and the air begins to 

 become balmy, out will come the flower- 

 buds, hanging from long golden threads, 

 and often in less than 36 hours a tree Avhich 

 looked as though it would not bloom in 

 weeks comes out h: full bloom, looking as 

 though each twig were a festoon of silver 

 and gold, as bright in color as a bed of dan- 

 delions when in full bloom, and gi^dng 

 whole tree-tojDS a glorious appearance. And 

 one of the strange things, and a fact rarely 

 noticed except by the close observer, is that 

 at the first blossoming stage there is scarce- 

 ly a leaf put out till after the buds have 

 mostly opened, inviting the bees to a sump- 

 tuous feast which they are on hand to enjoy 

 from early in the morning till late at night. 



In my first years of beekeeping I thought 

 tliat the combs got pollen-bound from the 

 enormous quantities of pollen stored, where 

 good weather lasted till the wind-up of this 

 bloom; but later I found that, before the 

 fruit bloom put in an appearance two 

 weeks later, this pollen was nearly if not 

 quite all turned into brood, with which 

 nearly every available cell in the comb was 

 teeming. Then, besides this honey and 

 pollen coming to the bees, there is another 

 marvelous sweetness coming from the evap- 

 orated sap which flows in early spring from 

 any wound that may come to the tree. 



